


Artist Brother, In New York

by byourladyhell



Series: The Pansy 'Verse [1]
Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Multi, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24066547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byourladyhell/pseuds/byourladyhell
Summary: Darry just wanted a relationship with his only living family member.  Was that too much to ask? [coming-out fic, set in 1972]
Series: The Pansy 'Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111469
Comments: 18
Kudos: 70





	1. Act One

**Act One**

_ Harts' Desire _ was a terrible show, and I never missed an episode. We even brought in our old black-and-white TV to the office so we could watch when we took our lunch at two. It was damn near pornography, unlike anything I'd seen on television. And it was on in the middle of the day, for Pete's sake. It had everything: psychosexual melodrama, gallows humor, literal back-stabbings, and Alexander Hart.

With his pompous accent and arrogant smirk, I could almost forget it was Ponyboy playing him. But it was broadcasted live and the only time I knew exactly where my kid brother was.

"Oh good," Yvonne said, as Alexander came into the parlor from the garden and promptly took off his shirt for no good reason. "I was afraid he'd overheat."

I think Pony spent more time on that show shirtless than not. He played a real womanizer. It was hilarious if you knew him - shy Pony had never been one to strut. But boy, did he strut on that soap. He'd grown up a lot. Of course, maybe he strutted in real life now, too.

"Body ain't used to it," Two-Bit piped in.

I shushed him. Yvonne snickered.

"Hey, she was talking too!"

"She's my wife. Now can-it." I didn't need their commentary. I needed to see Pony and also figure out if Penelope was really pregnant.

Yvonne kept talking. I loved her, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut for 25 minutes. "I think that's the one Pony's dating. She's a ballerina or something. I know it's one of his sisters. Which one do you think looks more like a ballerina?"

Alexander grabbed the woman on the screen. They kissed passionately.

Two-Bit let out a low whistle. "Didn't you just say that was his sister?"

"Step," I replied curtly.

"I don't know what's going on."

"Well, you would if you kept your trap shut,"

Alexander and Penelope fell into bed and the screen faded to black. The credits rolled and I watched the name "Michael Curtis" come and go, before the news break came on.

We kept eating our sandwiches, the construction business wasn't exactly overflowing in November.

Two-Bit had his feet up on my desk and he used the brown paper bag on his lap like a plate. He started working for us two years prior, right when we started. He was actually pretty reliable, at least for me. All he really had to do was stay sober enough to drive a truck. "You hear from the kid lately?" he asked.

"He's coming home for Christmas."

He'd said as much in the handmade card he sent for Yvonne's birthday, with a bar napkin signed by some old rhythm and blues singer pressed inside it. Of course, we hadn't heard anything since. It had been about a month ago. He didn't have a phone in his apartment, so I couldn't call him. I just had to wait for him to call, which wasn't often, maybe once every few months. He was busy and long-distance calls were expensive. It was fine.

Even if I might have rather he used his brains than his body, I was still awful proud of him. He was a little bit famous. He wasn't Burt Reynolds or anything, but I didn't know anyone else who was an actor. It gave me something interesting to talk about at family get-togethers.

* * *

"How's your brother doing? It's a shame he couldn't make it home," Yvonne's Aunt Rosette asked at Thanksgiving, as she inspected the casserole of cornbread dressing that I made from her recipe, which Yvonne took credit for.

"He's good. Busy."

"What's he up to now? Still writing?" That had been his aspiration when he moved out there. Also unlike anyone else I knew, he'd been published. I don't think he ever tried anything he didn't excel at.

"I think he's focusing on acting right now."

"Well, make sure you bring him my way for Christmas. He's such a doll. You did right by him."

I smiled. "Thank you, ma'am."

She smiled back before turning to Yvonne. "You're turning into a real cook, baby."

"Thanks, Auntie." Yvonne winked at me, grinning. 

"Just about time you start having your own babies, I think."

The grin left Yvonne's face real fast then. We wanted kids. It just wasn't a good time with the business.

Now, I ain't lying when I say I love my in-laws. I liked going over for dinner on holidays and after church on Sundays. Without my in-laws, I didn't think Curtis Construction Co. would have a snowball chance in hell. I also liked that they liked me more than Yvonne's sister's husband, Roger, who had picked up evaporated milk, instead of sweetened condensed, the idiot.

Al, my father-in-law and Yvonne's brother Lenny came with me to fix Roger's mistake. We had to wake up Lenny when we parked in the grocery store lot. He had driven eleven hours from Dillard University for Thanksgiving. He was about the same age as Pony, but seemed impossibly young.

We wandered around the store in a sea of men staring at grocery lists.

I was about to suggest we pick up a sack of flour just in case, when I saw Cathy Carlson by a display of graham crackers.

"Darry!" She shouted brightly. She was easy to recognize, even though I hadn't seen her since she and Pony broke up before heading off to college. She had one of her little sisters trailing behind her and another (who was too big) sitting in the basket of the shopping buggy.

"Hi, Cathy," I said as she hugged me. I had always liked her, probably more than Pony did. She had a good head on her shoulders. She turned to Lenny and hugged him, too - She knew Lenny from when he and Pony ran track - before introducing herself to Al.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm a friend of Ponyboy's. And this is Daniel." She gestured to a tall guy with light hair that I hadn't noticed, who was looking uncomfortable.

He did not offer his hand to shake.

"Is Pony in town?" she began, in a burst of excitement. "I really want to talk to him. I'm so excited for him. I saw a big display for  _ Rejected _ at a Waldenbooks in Austin, and I can tell it's picking up with this printing. It's special. I'm student-teaching in Garyville and the kids just love it. It'd be great to have him come in and have the kids see a real author. You know he hates the soap. It'd be great if he could quit and just write, you know? He sent me a galley proof of his new book. Isn't it great? Just really well crafted."

"I thought you said he quit writing?" Lenny asked.

I had absolutely no idea about his new book. He did not send me a galley proof.

There was a moment where her large eyes grew even larger, and I could see the gears turning.

"Well, we really should be going. Mom's waiting on the butter. It was good to see you Darry, Lenny. And nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson."

"Sounds like he has a lot of irons in the fire," Al said.

"Sure does," I said.

* * *

I spent the next few days pissed. Pissed that Pony had made me look like a fool in front of my father-in-law. Pissed that he hadn't told me about his new book. Pissed that after he graduated from college he stayed in New York. Pissed that Yvonne's siblings all managed to make it back for Thanksgiving.

And I was still pissed when the phone rang a couple Wednesdays later during supper.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Darry. It's me." Pony sounded remarkably like Dad on the phone. I did not tell him this. "How've you been?"

"Fine." I could hear the city in the background of his voice, a mess of wheels screeching to a halt and people shouting through the graininess of a long-distance payphone call. "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "Nothing. I just can't make it down to Tulsa for Christmas. I got work stuff and this big meeting on the 27th, and I gotta stay for it."

I stared at the fridge, where a magnet that looked like a strawberry held down a poem I didn't understand ripped from  _ The New Yorker _ four years ago. "Alright. Fine."

"Yeah, well, I'll let you go."

I thought about mentioning the new book but decided not to. "Bye."

"Bye, Darry."

Yvonne looked at me expectantly. "That was Pony. He's not coming. Again." It wasn't the first time he'd cancelled. I should have seen this coming.

"I'm sorry, babe. I'm sure he's just really busy." Her eyes were sympathetic and knowing.

I had come to accept that Pony did not want me to be a part of his life. After all, hadn't it been that way all along? Since Mom and Dad died, and he gave me that look at the funeral like he didn't know who I was. Or when he ran away with Johnny. Or when Soda died and we treaded water until Pony went to Columbia and left me.

So we weren't close. Who cared? Lots of people weren't close with their siblings. Did Two-Bit know a damn thing about Brenda? I doubted it. Yvonne's family were the weird ones. I didn't care. If he wanted to live in a world I wasn't a part of, it was fine by me. He wouldn't visit Tulsa, and I wouldn't mail him Christmas cookies this year.

I knew, though, if he'd just get a phone, I would have called him every Sunday night after the rates went down. Our relationship had always been at his mercy.

* * *

Curtis Construction Co. was just on the other side of barely scraping by, which was to be expected for a new business. We didn't have ham money, so we were making cookies for the crew. I drew my thumb along the recipe card, tracing Mom's neat cursive, so much like my own. I sat it down gingerly, away from the ingredients and got to work. The house smelled like pine and cinnamon.

I was using a tablespoon to pack down brown sugar into a measuring cup, when Yvonne came in with the mail.

"Bill, bill," she said as she filed them away into our accordion file. "Christmas card from the Hammonds" - she opened it - "Their baby's still ugly but at least they put a Santa hat on him to cover his forehead, see?"

I looked up. She was right as always, but something else caught my attention: a yellow envelope with slanted, angular handwriting scrawled across it.

"Oh, something from Pony!" She removed the card out and flipped it open. I looked at three upside down wisemen in a swirl of yellow. Another bit of paper drifted to the floor like a falling leaf. Yvonne picked it up and swore. She never swore. She could have a mouth full of shit, and she wouldn't say it.

"What's wrong?"

She showed me a check for $5,000 to be paid to the order to Yvonne and Darrel Curtis. The memo line read simply, "Merry Christmas!"

"What the  _ fuck _ ? What the fuck does he think he's doing?" I dropped the measuring cup and spoon down onto the counter. "What does the card say?"

"Nothing." She looked at the card again, before locking eyes with me. "This is a lot of money." Her brown eyes were wide.

It was more than half of my yearly earnings. And he just sent it to me. He was unbelievable.

Did he think he could avoid me for years and send me fucking money?

I wasn't going to cash it, I could tell you that much. (But ashamedly, we couldn't throw it away either. We tucked it away on the buffet, behind Mom and Dad's wedding picture.)

* * *

When our bedroom door was open you could see the door to the guest room, which had served as storage space for the things we never got around to unpacking. It was supposed to be Pony's room. When we bought the house, this was the room I thought he would stay in. It was the second one we fixed-up. He'd never seen it.

"I'm glad Allen's accepted our bid." Yvonne had a shrewd business sense, and she liked to talk shop even when we were getting ready for bed. Most of the time I did too. "I hope we can start demo by the 8th."

I grunted and watched her open a yellow jar. I could smell the cocoa butter instantly. I always liked how Yvonne got ready for bed. It was the same every night. She'd put her hair up in her silk scarf. She'd put on her Pond's Cold Creme on her face and Young 'n Free Cocoa Butter Creme on the rest of her. I'd watch, already under the covers. I liked routines.

"Tell me what you're thinking." She was rubbing the butter onto her elbow.

"Why'd he send that check? What's his angle?"

"I don't think he has one. He's not that conniving. I can guarantee you that boy doesn't even have any idea you're in a fight."

"We're not in a fight."

"Then you could ask him, instead of being passive aggressive for once."

"I'm not passive aggressive. And I can't ask him, because I can't reach him. He's got five grand lying around, but he doesn't have a telephone?" He probably did have a telephone. He probably just didn't give me his number, so he could control our conversations.

She walked on her knees across the bed and started rubbing my forearms with excess creme. I liked it when she did that. It felt nice.

"Maybe you could write him a letter." 

I snorted. I wasn't going to do that.

She dropped my now slippery arms. I think she might have been getting impatient with me. "Then go see him. You have to do something. This - " She waved her hand at my direction. "- isn't working."

"Go see him in New York?"

"If you want to, you should. " She untucked and lifted the bed sheet on her side, sliding in to press a cold foot to my calf. "Darry, it's too easy to fill in the other side of the conversation when the other person isn't there."


	2. Act Two

**Act Two**

It was a long drive to New York and especially stressful as I'd never driven in snow like that before. My fingers ached from the cold and gripping the wheel so hard. Why anyone would choose to live in the North East was beyond me. By the time I got to the George Washington Bridge, I was barely keeping my eyes open. I had only stopped a few times.

" _ She says, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side/ Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side/ And the colored girls go,/ do do do …. _ "

Christ. I turned off the radio. New York in the early seventies was the closest thing to hell I'd ever seen. The building next to Pony's was literally burnt down to a pile of rubble. Everything smelled like cold piss and garbage. I went inside to see the place that Pony'd rather live than with me, after I parked behind a car sat on top of cinder blocks. No one better take my fucking tires. I walked inside, ignoring the shouts from the people I passed.

It was harder to find the courage to knock when I stood in front of Apartment 4F, than it was when I played it out in my head on the drive. There was a cat compressed along the bottom of the door. I didn't think Pony had a cat, so I kicked the door above it, hoping it'd move.

"Hey!" a small voice shouted. I looked around, then down. It was a little girl - about four or eight years old - on a tricycle, in the middle of a hallway right by six flights of stairs. I wondered if I should do something. I didn't like little kids. Their voices were too high, their hands were always sticky, and I couldn't be goofy enough to entertain them. Both my kid brothers were better at that sort of thing than me. "You lookin' for Ponyboy?"

"Uh, yeah. Is this his place?"

She got off the tricycle and picked up the cat.

"Yeah, but I ain't seen him in a while." - that was kinda worrisome - "You see him, you tell him he owes me Razzles. I'm Sheila. Tell him he owes Sheila Razzles."

"You got parents or somethin'?"

"You don't scare me," she said, which did not answer my question. I didn't want to scare her anyway. She turned, cat still in her arms, and got back on the tricycle and peddled away down the long hall, around the corner. Honestly, the whole exchange gave me the creeps.

I stared at the door for a second. The anger I had felt not an hour ago was replaced with dread.

What if he got mugged or something? Or he had hurt himself? One of Dad's brother's had shot himself in the head before I was born. Pony could be real moody ...

Bracing myself, I knocked, then tried the door. It was unlocked. Didn't he ever think?

/

"Ponyboy?" I called, no one answered.

I slipped off my shoes, and draped my coat on the back of a nearby rocking chair, which was filled with books, and yanked the chain of the bare lightbulb swinging in the center of the apartment.

I had never been there before. It was one large, rundown room. I stepped over his clutter and peaked around. There was a wall that ran halfway through his apartment with a large window frame without glass in the center, housing another stack of books, a bottle of expensive looking whiskey, an old soup can turned ashtray, and two prescription pill bottles (one without a cap). I examined the bottles and wrote down the names of the pills (Diazepam and Seconal) on a scrap of paper, then slipped it in my billfold. Under that indoor window on the other of that wall was Pony's bed. The sheets were pulled off one corner and blankets twisted at the foot. He'd always been a restless sleeper. I made his bed.

How did he live like this?

I wasn't tired anymore, and the only thing I had to do was wait. I kept cleaning, going through his stuff as I did. I used to go through his stuff all the time when he was a teenager to make sure he wasn't on drugs or something. I found the cap to the pill bottle under the bed, next to - for some unfathomable reason - a greasy can of Crisco, which I put in the cupboard by the stove and wiped my hands on my blue jeans.

I didn't know how long he'd lived here. For most of his time at Columbia, he had rented a room from a professor near campus. I was relieved he was away from the grittier parts of New York and within proximity to an adult. Someone who might notice if he didn't come home at night. But he was alone now. I had never really lived alone, but Pony'd always been less social, so it wasn't hard to picture him here, flittering from one thing to the next like a goddamn hummingbird. Smoking on the bed, smoking leaning against the counter, smoking as he looked out the window threw through the pink curtains at the plows down below clearing paths in the snow.

There was a large canvas covered in shadowy figures, leaned up against the wall and a couple of other paintings on the wall that I didn't think were his. I don't know why. They just didn't seem like him.

His typewriter was on a coffee table, opposite a tiny velvet couch. On the ground there were all these pages crumpled up. It was a fucking fire hazard, and once the fire got going, he'd never make it out alive.

I gathered the wads of paper and matchbooks from bars and receipts with lines scribbled hastily.

One read:

_ Where were you that night _

_ my lonesomeness succumbed _

_ to your longing? I was waiting _

_ in the respite of the gap _

_ between your teeth _

_ Ready to be whatever it takes to _

_ take anything, please. _

Another:

_ What is romance, if not the intersection of friendship and desire, motherfucker? _

And so on.

I filled two trash bags with obvious trash, like a Pepsi bottle filled with cigarette butts and ashes. I straightened out the things I wasn't sure about and stacked them, like a flyer for some event at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. It said "Pride = Power." It didn't sound Episcopalian. I hoped it wasn't a cult.

On the kitchen counter there was a record player and tubes of paint. I made sure the caps were on tight (they weren't). I saw a galley proof of what must be his next book by his records. It was wire bound with plain black lettering across the white cover: FRANTIC MOMENTS by P.M. Curtis. I think it was the only thing I didn't move in his apartment. I didn't want to touch it. I stacked the records alphabetically, pausing when I came across Mom's Tom Lehrer albums. They were some of the few things Pony took with him after we sold the house.

I kept cleaning. I put a small harp-thing near the guitar and the hand drum, in the corner, and moved to the kitchen sink, where a pile of dirty dishes were soaking with paint brushes in sickly brown water. I started doing the dishes with cold water and the near-empty bottle of SunLight detergent.

I wished Pony could just pick one thing and really devote himself entirely to it. He was always so scattered. He must have been doing alright, if he could write a check that big, but think of how successful he could be if he had more direction.

He had a lot of magazines too, from  _ The Paris Review  _ to some funny little magazine called  _ Come Out!  _ I neatened them and placed them on the coffee table next to the typewriter.

I spent hours putting things right, before I laid on top of the bed and looked out the window. Where was he? It was nearly eleven o'clock. The curtain was sheer and kept nothing out. I could hear voices of men shouting at each other in the distance. I made a list of things I'd fix tomorrow in my head: the leaky showerhead, the space between the exterior window and it's frame where a draft was coming in, the stuck drawer by the sink, a few holes in the wall ...

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to a knock on the door. It opened before I reached it, revealing some man who wasn't my brother.

"Fuck. You've got to be kidding me." He stretched his neck to look over my shoulder, searching. He had strange blue eyes, so strange I stared. I ain't never seen a black guy with blue eyes before. I'd have to mention it to Yvonne. "Pony!" he called.

"He ain't here. Who are you?" I asked, still groggy from sleep.

"Who am  _ I _ ?"

"That's what I asked."

"You know what? I feel bad for you, so take this as a warning."

"A warning?" I stood up straight, crossed my arms over my chest and flexed. People didn't fuck with me. Not even in New York.

"Ponyboy -- he's mesmerizing. He's got all this beauty and sweetness and -- and pathos." The guy looked up at the cracked ceiling and shook his head. "He's the most fucked up person I've ever known." He dropped his head and leveled me with a cool stare. "So, enjoy it while it lasts."

He left me bewildered. I didn't get it at all. This whole city was crazy. No wonder Pony liked it here, I reckoned he'd fit right in.

* * *

It was after two am, when Pony finally did show up.

"Darry? What the --" His wild eyes danced around his now clean apartment.

"Where the hell have you been?" I asked.

"Out. I didn't know I was having company. What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

"Okay? Is it okay that you're running around New York City at all hours of the night doing Lord knows what? I would have called the cops --"

"-- To turn yourself in for breaking into my apartment?"

"-- but you ain't got a damn phone. And it ain't breaking in if you leave the door unlocked."

"We never locked the door growing up." I could see his brain trying to catch up to the situation. He looked so confused. It'd be funny, if he hadn't always looked so damn confused when I talked to him.

"You’re a world away from Tulsa."

"Darry, I'm in Manhattan. On  _ 46th Street _ . It ain't that dangerous."

"They call it 'Hell's Kitchen,' for fuck's sake. Two different guys tried to sell me drugs before I walked into the building."

"There's plenty of drugs in Tulsa too, Darry. You don't got to do any. Just tell them ‘no thank you’ and keep walking. It's so mobbed up, nothing that bad ever happens here."

"Can you hear the words coming from your mouth? You're nuts."

" _ I'm _ nuts?  _ You  _ drove over a thousand miles to break into my apartment and rearranged my stuff."

"You can't live like that."

"Darry, I'll live however I like. You ain't in charge of me nomore. I've been on my own for five years." He walked further into the apartment, looking around. "What are you doing here?"

"You've been avoiding me for years, and I'm sick and tired of it. After everything I done for you. I kept a roof over your head, kept you on the straight-and-narrow, got you to fuckin' Columbia." It might be the first time I really held it over him so blatantly.

"I'm sorry, I was a kid when Mom and Dad died."

"That's not what I meant! Jesus!"

"Did you get my card? I'm trying to pay you back."

"I don't want your fucking money! You ain't been home in nearly four years, and now you're throwing money in my face."

"It hasn't been that long!"

"Don't try an' get into a fight about dates and times with me, kid. You won't win that one."

He deflated a little bit, because I was right. He looked down at the floor, while he said, "With the money, I didn't mean to offend you or anything."

Tired and heatless, I asked, "What'd you mean then?"

He shifted. "That was always the plan, right? You'd send me to college, I'd make good, and then I'd take care of you some."

"I can take care of myself."

"So can I."

"Seems that way."

"I just -- I got to leave and go to college and you didn't. I don't know." He shrugged.

I wanted to say, ' _ I got to have a childhood and you didn't.'  _ But there wasn't any way to make up that, and the admission would hurt too much. "That ain't your fault."

Despite my best efforts, Pony wasn't living the life I missed out on. This life was his own. If I'd have gone to college, it wouldn't have been an Ivy League school, but I would have majored in something reasonable, like accounting ... But that wasn't anything I'd thought about for a long time. It didn't matter now.

"Look, I just had a good year, and I thought it could help out your business or something." I hated how much it would help the business.

I was curious what "a good year" meant to him but didn't ask. We didn't grow up talking about money like this, mostly because we never had any.

"You could get a better place," I said.

"It's close to the studio." I thought he was gonna leave it at that, but he went on in a tentative voice. "And I'd feel out-of-place anywhere nicer."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I asked, "Why the hell would you have socks in a kitchen drawer?"

"It's right by the door. It's where I put my shoes on."

His incredulous face made my chest hurt. I've never been able to delight in Pony's spacy absurdity like the rest of my family did. It scared me. It really did.

He opened the drawer in question to be faced with cutlery, which was all dirty when I arrived, so who knows where he normally kept it. Then he looked up at me. "You really -- I'm not gonna be able to find anything." I couldn't tell if he was mad.

"Just think about where it ought to be." I rubbed the back of my neck. Maybe I  _ had _ overstepped …

"What are you doing here?" he asked again.

"I missed you," I was surprised that I said it. It hurt. My throat was tight.

He caught me off guard when he threw his arms around me. I brought my arms around him too. He had grown since I'd last seen him. His forehead came up to my cheekbone. I kept growing well into my twenties, maybe he would too. He wasn't ever gonna be broad like me and Dad, but he wasn't exactly small like Soda and Mom. He squeezed back nearly as hard as I did. He still smelled like home.

"S'good to see you, Darry."

Tight lipped, I kissed his temple and didn't let go until he did.

"You hungry?" he asked, as we broke apart. "There's a diner a few blocks down."

"Sounds good. All you got here is a can of Crisco and DingDongs."

He got red and scrubbed his hand over his face, before leading me out the door, which he left unlocked. He confessed to having lost the key several months ago.


	3. Act Three

**Act Three**

It was biting cold I wasn't used to, as we went to the diner on foot, passing by tons of strange people who were also out and about at 2:30 in the morning.

We walked by some heavily made up women in short-shorts, fur coats, and platform heels.

"Pony, sugar, why don't you bring your new friend over here," one shouted. Her voice was low and sultry.

As we got closer to these women, I was struck by how tall some of them were. At nearly 28, I was 6'4", same as Dad. I knew tall. These women were tall, and it wasn't just the heels.

Pony looked a little funny, before he introduced me. "They sure grow 'em handsome in Oklahoma, don't they?" one said. They were all laughing a bit, obviously drunk. We didn't chat long.

"Those are some tall ladies," I remarked as we walked away.

"Darry, you know they're --"

"Prostitutes, I know." I wasn't some rube. It didn't worry me that Pony was friendly with them. He was always smart when it came to girls.

"Right, nevermind." Pony was laughing at me a little. He looked like Soda when he laughed like that. "Okay, that's it, up ahead."

Pony pointed to a diner seemingly built out of a train car. When we got inside, people seemed to know him there too. In fact, the waitress brought over a coke for Pony as soon as we sat down. I got water. The place looked like a train car from inside, too, with curved, chrome walls decorated with frame photos of celebrities.

I shifted in the booth. We were both long legged, even if I was taller overall. It was hard to sit across from him and not bump knees. "You come here a lot?"

He shrugged. He was thinner than he looked on TV. It was still strange to be here, glimpsing at his life, filled with places I had never been and people I’d never met. It was so hard to talk to him.

He ordered a patty melt. I got a burger.

I told him about the business and our next project, tearing down what remained of the Dingo to put up a law firm. I told him what I’d last heard about Steve, how he had left Evie for her sister, how they’d been caught stealing cars stereos to fund their heroin addiction. I didn’t tell him that I wondered if maybe Soda had been lucky. 

Maybe he was thinking along the same lines, because he got that faraway look he got sometimes.

I searched for something else to say. "I'm supposed to tell you that you owe Sheila Razzles."

"Dammit. I keep forgettin'. I lost a bet." Pony paused. Ketchup dripped off the fry in his hand.

I decided I didn't want to know why he was waging bets with a small child. "She said you haven't been there in days."

"Sheila don't know shit." I couldn't tell from his face if he was lying to cover his ass or what. "She's a little kid, Darry."

Like  _ I _ don't know that.

"There was a guy, too."

Pony perked up then. "Yeah?"

"He seemed pretty mad when he saw me. Blue eyes."

"Did --" Pony looked at me real hard. "Did he say anything?"

"Not really." Nothing that made a lick of sense.  _ 'Fucked up,'  _ I recalled.  _ 'Fucked up, fucked up, fucked up.'  _ I hoped I hadn't fucked up the baby.

We ate mostly in silence. I asked him about the girl Yvonne thought he was dating, the ballerina. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then shrugged.

I wished I'd brought Yvonne. He'd answer her questions. Why did everything have to be so hard with him?

* * *

I felt awkward when we'd gotten back to his apartment. Suddenly I was a guest in his home, even though I'd already spent hours there, cleaning and sleeping in his bed like Goldilocks. We had stopped by the truck before coming up, so I had my gym bag with the few things I threw in before I'd left Tulsa.

"Nice decor," I teased as I sat on his little couch while he bustled around playing host.

"The apartment came furnished. The lady who used to live here died, and no one ever came for her stuff. There's some pretty neat pictures over in the closet. I didn't want to get rid of anything in case her kids ever came for it."

God, he was so weird. I could tell he was feeling awkward too, because he kept looking around like he might find something to ease the tension. Why was there always tension? 

He sat down next to me. There wasn't much space. Side-by-side, facing forward, I stared at his stocking feet.

Pony wore his socks inside out, because the seams bothered his toes, and when the hand-me-downs made their way down to him, Mom’d always taken out the tags because they were "too scratchy." He was the most sensitive person I'd ever known. In every way possible. He broke down the first time Dad let him come hunting.  _ 'It was beautiful and I killed it,'  _ he sobbed with a dead bird at his feet. He was ten.

"I ran into Cathy Carlson the other day."

"Oh yeah? How was she?"

"She said you had another book coming out." I was too tired to dance around it. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know you were interested." He didn't look guilty. He hadn't been hiding it from me, I realized. He just didn't think to tell me. Shouldn't he want to tell me things like that? I wanted to be somebody he wanted to share good news with.

"What's it about?"

"A murder. Well, I guess it is more about brothers. Pioneer Press is pretty excited about it. I think I might be able to write full time, if it sells like they think."

"You gonna quit acting?"

He looked at me strangely. "You didn't want me acting, anyway."

That's wasn't true. I didn't want him dropping out of college. He didn't, but I was worried he would. As soon as he started college, I feared he wouldn't finish. How could he manage in this big new city without someone on him to get things done, to keep in on track? Of course, it turned out he didn't need that. He had flourished in New York without me.

"I don't like everyone staring at me." He'd always gotten a lot of attention because of his looks. "It's not so bad, but everyone's so stressed out on set. If someone messes up their lines the producers give us hell. And it's real cold. There's talk it might get cancelled. When it does, I’ll just be out. Everyone says I'd like stage work, but it seems boring, doing the same thing every night. I'd rather write."

"When the show ends, you should come back to Tulsa. You can write from anywhere."

"Yeah, sure." He sounded noncommittal. He got real quiet.

I wondered what was so bad about Tulsa. I'd always thought he'd come back eventually, after he finished school.

He hadn't invited me to his college graduation, I didn't think he attended. Either way, he didn't invite me. I'd have come if he'd invited me.

I made him walk when he graduated from Will Rogers. He hadn't wanted to, but I thought about the day I graduated and how proud Mom and Dad were -- neither of them had a diploma. They threw a party with the whole neighborhood, which I left after an hour to go to Paul's. It seemed like Pony should walk. I thought he'd regret it if he didn't. But after the ceremony, after he took a few pictures with kids who’d insisted and walked through all their parents and families to our Ford, his face was red and blotchy. I knew he didn't want me to see him cry. I felt like shit. I wanted to apologize, or tell him it was okay if he was sad, but I didn't. I just added it to the running tally of how I'd failed him.

He left on a Greyhound bus a few days later, for Columbia's summer session. He'd been sixteen. In the scheme of things, I hadn't spent too long parenting him, never quite figured out how to, but I didn't know how not to, either.

I wanted to ask,  _ 'Why do you hate me?'  _ But I didn't.

I did ask, "You think it's strange that you're the only family I got left, and I don't know anything about you?"

"You've got Yvonne and her family," he said, ignoring the last part of my assertion. So I ignored it too.

"It ain't the same."

A heavy silence fell over us. He got up and started pacing. Then he stilled, chewed his fingernails and stared at me for a while.

"I got something to tell you."

He walked over and reached above the icebox to set out two tiny tea cups, of all things. He grabbed the whisky from the window ledge and poured. He handed one to me. He stood there. Anxiety poured into my chest like cement into a freshly dug foundation. I wanted him to spit it out.

"Cheers." We clinked our cups together. Mine looked dainty and ridiculous in my hand. I looked up at him. He looked so scared, I felt scared. We drank.

I was still sitting. "What is it?"

Enough time passed before he answered, I ran through scenarios in my head. He was sick. He was on drugs. He'd gotten some girl pregnant.

"Darry, I'm gay."

"What?" I really had no idea what he meant. I didn't know words like that back then.

"You know, like homosexual." His voice was oddly high-pitched and shaking as bad as his hands, but he kept his chin up defiant, firm. He lit up a smoke.

And I felt like I did six years ago, when he told me, _ "Darry, there's somebody from the army here."  _ Behind him, the street howled, cold wind gushing in through the gaps in the window frame. I couldn't move.

I finally asked, "Have you seen a doctor?"

"I don't need a doctor. I'm fine," He didn't look fine. He looked like he might pass out. I felt like I might pass out. "It ain't like I'm hurtin' or hurtin' anybody else. It's just what I -- who I am."

"I don't -- what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. You don't got to do nothing. I just thought you should know."

"Why?" Why would he tell me, if he didn't want me to help fix it?

"I don't wanna lie to you anymore. I've been so scared that I'd lose you; I think that's what I ended up doing. " He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling, which was already stained a sickly yellow. "That's some irony, right there."

"What are you gonna do, then?" I watched his smoke curl into nothingness.

"I'll keep doing what I've been doing."

"Which is?"

"I'll just make art and friends and date and maybe find someone nice and fall in love."

"With a man." There was water damage on the ceiling.

"That's the idea, yeah."

I ripped my eyes down to look at him. He was leaning against the counter, with his one arm wrapped around himself, daring and scared.

"Don't you want a family?"

He smiled a resigned smile. Mom's smile. "It's not about what I want. I can't love a woman like that. I'm not wired like that, ya know?"

I had all these ideas in my head. That Pony would get a real job, marry a nice girl, and have kids. He'd move closer. We'd get to the point where we could be friends almost. We'd barbecue together. I wanted those things for him. For me.

And he was going to give all of it up to, what, let perverts touch him? I felt nauseated.

"Did somebody … hurt you when you were little?" I couldn't look at him. I stared at the typewriter on the coffee table.

He shook his head. "It don't work like that Darry."

I didn't believe him. A stray thought, a realization came into my head. "Your English teacher --"

"Mr. Syme ain't like that!" he snapped.

"He was arrested -"

"Those were trumped up charges."

It'd been quite the scandal at the time. A high school teacher arrested in a police raid for 'lewd and lascivious behavior.'

Pony took a deep breath, and I realized I needed to too. "It's not something anyone did to me. I've always been different. For as long as I can remember. You know that."

I did know, but it wasn't something we ever talked about. There were unspoken rules in our house. You couldn't call Soda stupid or Pony a sissy. ‘Course, that didn't always stop me when we were younger.

I hated it, but something about it made sense. Still I ask, "What about Cathy?"

"She's a friend. A good one, but it was never like that -- she knew it."

"She knows?" Pony nodded. I had another persistent question. I needed to know. I don't know why, but I did. "Did Soda?" He nodded again. "Of course he did." It came out with more resentment than I wanted, directed at who I didn't know.

Pony looked at me measured. "I didn't tell him."

It made me feel better. Why would that make me feel better? 

"Remember my friend Mark Jennings?"

I nodded. "The drug pusher."

"Uh - yeah, well, Soda kinda saw us -- you know -- together."

"I loved him." He looked down at his teacup. "You know, the way you love someone when you're fifteen." His gaze was far away. "You remember how much Soda and me fought back then."

I did. Our house had turned into a warzone before Soda was drafted. I had thought it was the overdue tension of having a sibling so close to your age, that maybe they had trouble with the same girl. I was just glad for once that I wasn't the enemy.

How had all this gone down under my nose?

"He should have told me."

"You had enough to worry about." -- but I knew the truth, they hadn't trusted me -- "He thought he could deal with it himself. But I didn't want to be dealt with. I should have been more mature about it, with Soda. I just -- I don't know -- I thought he hated me."

That shocked me. "Sodapop loved you more than anything. Ain't nothing you could ever do to change that."

He nodded, his eyes were shiny. I knew that pained look. Pony had been too young when Mom and Dad died, but I had years of teenage brattiness and ungratefulness to dwell on. Sometimes I still got caught off guard and thought, ' _ I can't believe I said that to Mom.' _

I wanted to comfort him but didn't know how. I sat my cup on the coffee table and I put my hands under my knees.

"He was scared of us getting separated, me being institutionalized or something. I think he might have came around, if we'd had more time." He wiped away a tear with his thumb and smiled ruefully. "He showed me so much porn."

"What?"

"I guess he thought it would help. He even made a collage. "

"I remember that!" Soda had taped it to the back of Pony's door. It seemed odd at the time, but Soda was an odd duck.

I don't know if it was really that funny, but we laughed like it was. Soda'd been gone for six years. I don't think we'd talked about him like this before. We'd never talked about anybody, but everyone we'd lost lived in every word we ever spoke to each other. I couldn't lose Pony, too.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" he echoed.

"I don't get it." I wasn't about to lie to him. "But it's your life. You can do what you want. You're an adult."

"Really?"

He could have told me he was a serial killer, and I was so desperate to be close to him, I'd have helped him bury the bodies.

"I just want you to come home sometimes. And call. I should know what's happening in your life."

"I'll try harder, Darry."

"Me, too."

I was quiet for a long time. I was afraid of what I might say and how Pony might respond. Pony didn't say nothing neither, maybe for the same reasons. 

Eventually, he went to drop his cigarette into the old soup can.

"Let's just go to sleep."

"You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the settee."

"No, I'll take the couch."

After about ten minutes trying to lie on that stupid tiny couch, I stood up and walked to the bed. Even without any lights on in his apartment, I could see everything clearly. Light came in from the window. It never got completely dark here. Pony was still wide awake, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"Scoot over."

He did, pressed his body against the wall. The bed was plenty big.

It creaked when I got in. I tried not to think about what might have happened on this bed. I thought about the guy with the blue eyes. I wanted to ask Pony about him, but didn't.

"Can I tell Yvonne?"

"I guess."

I thought I'd feel better once I got to talk it over with her, but a small nagging fear sprouted. What if she had a problem with it? What would I do then?

Pony was staring at me.

He didn't take strongly after Mom or Dad, like Soda and me. He looked like someone shook them up in a sack, and out he came with all their best features and a few just his own. Dad's jaw, Mom's nose, Pony's eyes ...

"Think you're due for a haircut, kiddo," I told him and pushed his hair from his forehead.

"You should talk. I ain't ever see your hair so long."

I looked at him, my kid brother, the artist, the faggot. So pretty they put him on TV. He was exactly the kind of guy I would have beat the shit out of in high school. I remembered holding down Ken Mefford as Paul swung at him. I felt scared and sick.

"You really should lock your door, Pony, if you're gonna be … like that."

"Are you tryna tell me people don't like queers?"

I flinched. "I'm serious. Somebody might try to hurt you."

"I know, Darry. This has been my whole life. I know how bad people can be." He sighed. "You can put a new lock on it tomorrow, if you want."

"Do you know where there's a hardware store? We need plaster, too."

"I'm sure we can find one." No, then. I wasn't surprised.

"We'll get you some groceries too. You need real food."

"And Razzles for Sheila." His face broke into a smile. "I can't believe I thought you were a grownup when you were twenty."

"God, I ain't even feel grown now."

We stayed silent for a while, until Pony asked, "What -- what do you think Mom and Dad would think?"

I didn't have to think. "Shoot, they let you get away with murder."

"No, they didn't." This was a familiar fight.

"Remember when you drew all over the wall?"

"You mean my mural?"

Pony couldn't have been more than three or four. We'd just moved to Tulsa from Blaine County. Dad had let me have it a few days before for cutting all my and half of Soda's hair off. I was primed to see someone else get into trouble, but Dad saw the crayon squibbles on the wall and howled with laughter.  _ "I'm bigger than the house!"  _ Dad had bragged, pointing at the stick drawing of our family and our new home.  _ "My baby's an artist!"  _ As close as Dad and I were, I don't think he adored anyone like he did Pony. And he babied him like no one else -- his delicate, dazed baby. I used to find it so annoying. But gosh, if I don't miss it now.

"Daisy?" I had never used Dad's pet nickname for Pony before. It had felt more sacred than Pepsi-Cola. In Daisy, there was a tacit admission that Dad saw Pony for who he was and cherished him for it.

"Yeah?" Pony asked softly.

I loved him, but I didn't tell him that. "You got enough blanket?"

"I'm good. 'Night, Darry."

"G'night."

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to talk about the gay scene in '70s NYC, hit me up. For every reference I heavy handedly hamfisted in here, there's something I refrained from putting in.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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